OverDrive Checkouts

National Library Week

Freeman Library just awarded a 1,001 Books Before Kindergarten certificate to our beaming young reader to the left. This fun program encourages literacy and library use by letting children color in a star for each time they read a book or have it read to them. The children get a pamphlet with an animal picture to color and 100 stars to fill in. There are 10 pamphlets to go through in the program. At 1,001 books, the child will get a certificate of completion. This program is free and families can do it at their own pace. Libraries around the country will be celebrating National Library Week starting April 9 - what better way to kick off National Library Week than to visit Freeman Library and pick up a 1,001 Books Before Kindergarten pamphlet!

This year, National Library Week's theme is "Unlimited Possibilities @ Your Library," Now, let's face it, most of these National [Insert noun here] Weeks overstate by half the importance of the thing they celebrate--yes, oatmeal is an important part of a balanced breakfast, but the fact is that you could replace it with any number of cereal grains and life would go on, more or less, unchanged. That is not the case with our nation's public libraries.

Libraries are such an integral part of our community, we often take them for granted. So once a year, we have National Library Week – this year April 11-17 – to allow us time to acknowledge their value. Libraries provide information and entertainment for millions of people everyday all over the world, whether on a college campus or a major city or a small town. And there are the librarians who help us find what we need.